Charles Johnson - Dreamer

As we traipsed through the old house, its floorboards creaking beneath our feet, Smith responded to Amy’s family history with a contemptuous pfft! from his pursed lips, which puzzled me, because I almost felt that as Amy spoke I could hear her ancestors’ day beginning with breakfast-table prayer, which did not exclude even the youngest children; they had to know chapter and verse before their twelfth birthday. There were no spirits in this household. In my mind, I saw James — a tall, dark-skinned, suspender-wearing black man — insisting that his two sons and daughter, Amy’s grandmother, acquire as many skills as they had fingers on their hands, work for everything they received, and treat whatever possessions any family member had as carefully and conscientiously as if they belonged to someone else who one day might ask for their return. The family, he told them again and again, was far more than a group bonded by blood. More even than a collective that insured the survival of its members. More than anything else, according to the Griffith patriarch, it was the finest opportunity anyone would have for practicing selflessness, for giving to others day in, day out, and for this privilege, this chance to outgrow his own petty likes and dislikes, opinions and tastes, he gave abundant thanks. If they wanted to be happy, he counseled them, the first step was to make someone else happy. Through Amy’s words I saw him demand that his children read after their chores were finished — what, he didn’t care, but he wouldn’t talk with them if two days had gone by and they’d not touched a book. (Smith was looking at his watch, frowning heavily; her story so displeased and rattled him that he entered one of the bedroom doorways at the same instant I did, and for a second we were stuck, shoulder to shoulder, our arms pinned at our sides, Chaplinesque, until I jerked free.) Eventually, she explained, the farm could not sustain itself. By the late 1950s, his sons left to find work elsewhere. Mama Pearl did the same, moving to Chicago, where she was steadily employed at Fanny’s Restaurant in the suburb of Evanston, and possession of the property came to her when her mother died in 1963.

Now we were in the kitchen. Smith glowered darkly out the window, cracking his knuckles. I tried to ignore him. I said to Amy, “Your people lived like that?”

“Yes.”

“I wish I’d known your great-grandfather.” In the depths of me I did. Partly I was envious, knowing so little of my own family’s past before they migrated from the South to the city; and partly I hungered for the sense of history she had, the confidence and connectedness that came from a clear lineage stretching back a century. “He sounds like a wonderful man.”

“He was.” Amy laughed. “Mama Pearl told me he used to say over and over, ‘Life is God’s gift to you; what you do with it is your gift to Him’”

“Excuse me,” growled Smith. “I need to shit.”

Amy flinched, as though he’d pinched her. She pointed through the window to an outhouse about fifty feet from the back door. Smith seemed anxious to flee the farmhouse and had one foot out the door when she said, “Wait,” reached into one of the boxes of SCLC materials we’d placed on the table, and brought out one of the Commitment Blanks distributed among volunteers. “I brought this along for you to sign.”

I knew that form well, having signed one earlier in the year. On it were ten essential promises — like the tablets Moses hauled down from smoky Mount Sinai — the Movement asked of its followers. Seeing the form made me feel a little weak, insofar as I remembered the hundreds of times I’d failed to uphold these vows:

COMMANDMENTS FOR VOLUNTEERS

I HEREBY PLEDGE MYSELF — MY PERSON AND BODY — TO THE NONVIOLENT MOVEMENT THEREFORE I WILL KEEP THE FOLLOWING COMMANDMENTS:

Meditate daily on the teachings and life of Jesus.

Remember always that the nonviolent movement seeks justice and reconciliation — not victory.

Walk and Talk in the manner of love, for God is love.

Pray daily to be used by God in order that all men might be free.

Sacrifice personal wishes in order that all men might be free.

Observe with both friend and foe the ordinary rules of courtesy.

Seek to perform regular service for others and for the world.

Refrain from the violence of fist, tongue, or heart.

Strive to be in good spiritual and bodily health.

Follow the directions of the movement and of the captain on a demonstration.

I sign this pledge, having seriously considered what I do and with the determination and will to persevere.

NAME_____________________________ ( Please print neatly )

He tore it from her hand and tramped outside, his action so rude — so brusque — that it startled Amy and angered me. I followed him into the backyard, clamped my fingers on the crook of his arm, and spun him round to face me.

“You want to tell me what’s wrong?”

“That story she told,” said Smith, “it’s a fucking lie. Front to back, it was kitsch . All narratives are lies, man, an illusion. Don’t you know that? As soon as you squeeze experience into a sentence — or a story — it’s suspect. A lot sweeter, or uglier, than things actually were. Words are just webs. Memory is mostly imagination. If you want to be free, you best go beyond all that.”

“To what? ”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. By the way”—he held up the Commitment Blank and grinned—“tell her thanks for this. I need something to wipe with.”

I stood and watched him squeeze into the outhouse and shut the door. I picked up a handful of rocks and pegged them against the wall. Inside, Smith laughed. He reminded me I owed him for saving my skin in Chicago, and kept on talking through the door, railing against conformity and convention, all the while emptying his bowels loudly, with trumpeting flatulence and gurgling sounds and a stink so mephitic it made me choke, then fleeing back into the farmhouse, I found Amy looking through his bags.

Winged open in her hands was one of Smith’s sketch-books. She turned each page slowly, puzzling over verses he’d scrawled beneath a series of eight charcoal illustrations of a herdsman searching for his lost ox. Finding it. And leading it home, where — in the final panel — both hunter and hunted vanished in an empty circle. “Chaym is talented,” she said as I stepped closer, looking over her shoulder, “but I can’t see him helping the Movement. Look at these.” She flipped through more pages, turning them carefully at the bottom edge, as if she were afraid the images might soil her fingers. But I was not seeing Smith’s drawings. No. I saw only the softness of her skin, and before I knew full well what I was doing I encircled my arms round her waist and lowered my head to her shoulder in a kiss. Amy stiffened for an instant. Then I felt her relax, offering no resistance whatsoever to my embrace. She squeezed my arm gently, then stepped to one side and placed the sketchbook back on the kitchen table.

“That was sweet, Matthew, but please don’t do it again.”

“Why not?”

“I know you’re attracted to me,” she said. “I know that. And I’m flattered. I really am. It’s just that I’m not right for you. Or you for me. Your sign is water — didn’t you say that once? Mine is earth. Together, all we’d make is mud .” She tried to laugh, to get me to laugh, as one might a child who has knocked over his water glass at the table and needs to be chastised but not crushed for his blindness. His blunder. She was not angry, only disappointed, I thought, and was doing her best to be gracious — to salvage the situation for me and herself — after the minor mess I’d created. And it was strange, I realized, how at that moment my emotions were a pastiche of pain and wonder at her civilized composure, her ability to absorb the discomfort and disorientation my desire caused her — as if she were stepping over a puddle — and at the same time transform it into something like sympathy for me, for how confused and aching I felt right then — like someone who’d fallen off a ladder, say, or stepped on a rake. Yes, that was how I felt. Gently she placed her hand on my arm, and in a voice as full of candor as it was of Galilean compassion, said, “I’m fond of you, really I am, but I’m not the right person for you.” Once again she smiled, as one might when a child is being unreasonable. “Someday, if you do well, you’ll find someone right for you. I need somebody a little more like the men I knew when I was growing up. Or like Dr. King. Oh, God, I hope I haven’t hurt you.”